The city of Grand Rapids is a model of government transparency, while
the local transit partnership leaves something to be desired, according to a
Kent County organization.

Kent County
Families for Fiscal Responsibility, a nonpartisan taxpayer
advocacy group, gives the city of Grand Rapids an “A” for “doing an excellent
job of posting information for the public’s awareness.” However, the local
Interurban Transit Partnership, The Rapid, received a “D–.”

“We were surprised by how little information The Rapid makes available
to the taxpayers of Kent County,” the group stated in the press release. “[W]e hope that, because
of this poor showing, the board of directors of The Rapid dedicates some
resources to improving this score in the future.”

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On its website, the organization’s transparency project says that
it is not surprised by the findings, explaining that it has had to “resort to
Freedom of Information Act requests” just to get “basic information” from the
transit group.

“It’s unfortunate that The Rapid, which sees fit
to spend $250,000 on a piece of art for its headquarters,
can’t spend some money to make itself more transparent to the taxpayers who pay
the bills. It’s extremely inexpensive to post information to the Internet these
days, but our inclination is that The Rapid does this on purpose.”

The Rapid CEO Peter Varga disagrees with the group’s assessment.
In an email, Varga said, “The Rapid is a highly transparent public enterprise,
accountable to taxpayers and continuously reports measurable success.

“The Board of Directors holds open meetings including all
committee meetings, the budgets are approved in a public setting, the minutes
are posted on line, and major documents such as Environmental Assessments,
alternatives analysis and the Transit Master Plan are available to the public
and on line.”

KCFFR says on its website that each governmental body was rated
based on availability of information, budgets and audits, meeting minutes,
employee pay scales, union contracts and other select information. Scores were
added up based on the number of possible points, and
a final letter grade was assigned

The group believes the ease of posting this information online for
local taxpayers to see should spur transparency in the county.

“The whole purpose of the survey is to gauge
our local governments in their level of transparency, provide a means of
determining progress from one year to the next, and hopefully encourage some
productive competition to improve easy access to information,” said spokesman
Eric Larson.

The full list of scores and criteria applied by KCFFR is available here. A
report card from The Rapid is available here.

Workers who chose to leave unions want to fend for themselves but current law requires unions in union shops to negotiate their pay and work conditions. "Worker's Choice" gives employees the freedom to choose representation.

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